'Mr. President,' the secretary countered, 'would
you have believed they would invade the United States with twenty longbowmen,
landing in Manhattan off a chartered sailing vessel?'
-The Mouse That Roared

At any rate, Tully Bascombe, chief forest ranger of the Duchy (again
played by Sellers in the film), and twenty longbowmen charter a boat and
invade Manhattan, intending to surrender as quickly as possible.
But by happy coincidence, the whole city is underground for an air raid
test, and when first Tully and his chain mail clad "army" are mistaken
for aliens and then they capture a scientist, Dr. Kokintz, and his super-lethal
quadium (or Q) bomb, Grand Fenwick ends up winning the war. Armed
with the Q bomb, Fenwick forms a League of Little Nations and dictates
its own peace terms and blackmails the U.S. and Russia into a general nuclear
disarmament.

Tully, hero of Fenwick's great victory, of course gets the girl--Dr.
Kokintz's daughter in the film; the Duchess herself in the novel.
This gives Mr. Wibberley one last opportunity for a very amusing, though
thoroughly politically incorrect, observation, as Mountjoy tries to convince
the Duchess that she must take a husband :

'I hope,' said Gloriana warily, 'that you are not
going to suggest that I marry the American minister because I won't do
it.
I've been reading about the Americans in a women's
magazine and they're all cruel to their wives,'

'Cruel to their wives?' echoed the count.

'Precisely. They treat them as equals.
They refuse to make any decisions without consulting them. They load
them up with
worries they should keep to themselves. And
when there isn't enough money, they send them out to work instead of earning
more by their own efforts. Some of them even
make their wives work so they can go to college. They are not men
at all.
They are men-women. And their wives are women-men.
If I am to marry, I want a husband who will be a man and let me
be a woman. I'll be able to handle him better
that way.'

Of course, the ultimate truth of this sharp observation lies in the
final line, Gloriana's certainty that theoretical "equality" is unnecessary
for her to actually control a husband.

Both book and movie are a great deal of fun. They are well worth
seeking out. That their satire is once again applicable to the events
of the day should be reason enough for a revival.